BlueSky4Children (Shanghai)
Wuppertal Institut für Klima, Umwelt und Energie (Germany)
Establishing a Global Sustainable Clothing Network
Recycling, re-using and repairing are the future. The Wuppertal Institut is as committed to prolonging the life-cycle of textile industry products as the much younger NGO Blue Sky 4 Children is. Their cooperation highlights the problem of the highly polluting and wasteful industry and introduces new methods of NGO involvement in fighting it.
Both want to establish an online platform and the continuous sharing of information on environmental public interest litigation cases to improve professional capacities in environmental law litigation worldwide.
Monika Wirges – Wuppertal Institut für Klima, Umwelt und Energie and Zhang Lingling – BlueSky4Children
The objective of the Twinning was to discuss the possibility of building a sustainable clothing network and improve the sustainability of clothing across its life cycle, focusing on recycling and different options of reuse in order to find further approaches on how to reduce the carbon, water and material footprints of clothes. Both partners benefited from the cooperation, as an insight to the different approaches towards sustainability in the other country was given.
In addition, the connection between Wuppertal Institute research methods and BlueS ky4Children’s concrete actions in the clothing sector formed a synergy with regard to the question how awareness for the recycling and reuse of clothing can be raised and why the overall environmental impact of clothing should be reduced.
“The underlying idea was to give BlueSky4Children assistance to attract interest of potential investors and other interested stakeholders..”
Monika Wirges and Susanne Fischer
Activities Lingling and Chunyan visiting Wuppertal Institut für Klima, Umwelt und Energie in Wuppertal
- Working for Wuppertal Institute on an Irish recycling project.
- Take part in presentations, workshops and meetings in Berlin on issues of re- and up-cycling.
- Get experiences in comparison of different situations of recycling in Germany and China.
- Visiting other organizations, like re:Newcell.
Activities Susanne and Monika visiting BlueSky4Children in Shanghai
- Collecting use clothes for textile donation and mechanical recycling.
- Engaging in communities for textile up-cycling and online education for a minimalized lifestyle.
- Take part in various workshops to rise school children’s awareness for textile up-cycling.
” The exchange month gave us a good overview of the working method and environment of different NGOs, textile recycling company and the government/academic involvement..”
Zhang Lingling and Zhao Chunyan
Twinning Report BlueSky4Children (Shanghai) & Wuppertal Institut für Klima, Umwelt und Energie (Germany)
Twinning Experience Presentation BlueSky4Children (Shanghai) & Wuppertal Institut für Klima, Umwelt und Energie (Germany)
About the Twinning organizations
BlueShy4Children, Shanghai
Founded in 2015 BlueSky4Children is a growing grassroots NGO based in Shanghai. Their main focus is on prolonging clothes lifecycles. They work on clothes recycling starting with door to door collections, continuing with recycling bin management, re-make workshops, etc. The organisation built a platform called “Two Pinecones” which is the first and only non-profitable door-to-door clothes collection platform in China. BlueSky4Children also cooperates with companies and communities to place recycling bins and provide tailored recycling courses in economically underdeveloped areas.
Wuppertal Institut, Germany
The Wuppertal Institut für Klima, Umwelt und Energie designs transitions towards sustainable development. It aims at generating practical and actor-oriented solutions for environmental issues on local as well as global level and is organized in four research groups: Future Energy and Mobility Structures; Energy, Transport and Climate Policy; Material Flows and Resource Management; Sustainable Production and Consumption. Clients of the Wuppertal Institute come from governments, the business and industry sector as well as civil society.
